1. Field of the Invention
This invention generally relates to a bottle conveying apparatus and more particularly to an improved conveyor apparatus for heat shrinking tamperproof bands onto necks of containers, which apparatus is conveniently adjustable to accommodate a variety of sizes of containers.
2. Description of the Prior Art
As is known, particularly in beverage bottling production lines, bottles or containers automatically pass continuously through a number of stations such as a filling station, a closure applying station, and a neck washing station at high speed. When tamperproof closures are employed, a heat shrinking station is conventionally inserted in the production line after the closure application station.
Various types of machines for conveying bottles at high rates of speed have been proposed in the past. One Example of such a machine is disclosed in British Specification No. 2,021,032A, issued to Obrist. In this machine, bottles standing upright on a moving conveyor belt are conveyed by a transport screw along a wall opposite the screw which rotates concurrently the bottles about their vertical axes. The conveyor belt and transport screw are operated in synchronism and the bottles are conveyed and rotated through a region where hot air is impinged on tamperproof bands to shrink them onto the necks of the bottles. A disadvantage of this machine is that the pitch of the transport screw will only accommodate bottles having one size diameter. Thus, when bottles having different size diameters are to be passed through the production line, the transport screw must be changed for each different size bottle to be run through the line. The downtime required in changing the transport screw each time a different size bottle is run is obviously expensive.